2.3 Using the UWRT EE GitHub

Owned by Logan Hartford
Last updated: Feb 04, 2023
3 min read

Electrical Sub-Team GitHub: GitHub - uwrobotics/MarsRoverHardware: PCB designs for the University of Waterloo Robotics Team

  1. Clone the MarsRoverHardware repository to the machine you will be using Altium on.

  2. If you are working on a new project, please follow 2.4 Project Creation. If you are working on an existing project, navigate to the project folder in the repository and open the prjPCB file. If you just want to get your libraries set up, open any project in the repository, but make sure not to save any changes made.

  3. Open up a schematic sheet for the project. Click on the Components tab in the bottom right corner. If you don’t see it, click on the ‘Panels’ button. Once the components tab is open, click the three horizontal bars in the top right corner of the tab then select ‘File-Based Library Preferences. A new window will open.

4. In this new window click on the ‘Installed’ tab at the top and then click the ‘Install’ button.

 

5. Then navigate to the libraries folder in your local clone of the MarsRoverHardware repository. Select ‘UWRT_Forrprint_Library_2020.PCBLib’ and then click open. This library has now been added to Altium. Do the same for ‘UWRT_Schematic_Library.SchLib’.

6. Open up a schematic sheet. In the Components tab, you should be able to select ‘UWRT_Schematic_Library_2020.SchLib’ from the drop-down menu. You can now click and drag out components from the schematic library into your schematics.

7. To make changes or add parts to the SCH or PCB libraries, the easiest way to do that is to add them to the project. To do this, in the ‘Project’ tab, right-click on the PrjPcb file (the project file) and select ‘Add Existing to Project…’

8. In the window that pops up, navigate to the libraries folder in your local clone of the MarsRoverHardware repository. Select ‘UWRT_Forrprint_Library_2020.PCBLib’ and then click open. This library has now been added to the project. Do the same for ‘UWRT_Schematic_Library.SchLib’.

9. To open up the libraries, navigate to the newly added libraries section of the ‘Project’ tab. Double click on either of the libraries to open them as windows in Altium.

10. You are now ready to start using and creating parts in your PCB designs.

11. Please read through the important notes section to prevent work from being lost in the future.

12. Next proceed to 2.4 Project Creation to learn about our team's best practices when creating new projects.

 

Important Notes on Using the Libraries:

To prevent merge errors on our GitHub, we must be systematic in how we commit and push changes to libraries. To prevent errors, follow the guidelines below:

  • Do not create branches, work out of the master branch.

  • ANY time you have made changes or additions to either of the libraries, you must first verify that the repo is ‘free’ and then announce that the repo will be ‘busy’.

  • This is done through the ‘ee-git’ channel on the Electrical section of the UWRT Discord server. Here is an example of how to commit changes to the libraries:

  • Make sure the ‘lib is free’ and that you announce that ‘lib is busy’ before committing any changes. Make sure you push your changes to origin before announcing that the library is once again free.